The 11-Year-Old Son Of Sundar Pichai, Google CEO, Is Mining Ether At Home!

The 11-Year-Old Son Of Sundar Pichai, Google CEO, Is Mining Ether At Home!

By Kathleen Jordan

Posted on Nov. 3, 2018

Forget the crypto mining experts, the 11-year-old son of Google CEO is mining ether, cryptocurrency of ethereum blockchain, on their home PC. At a recent DealBook conference organized by the New York Times, Google CEO Sundar Pichai revealed in an interview, when asked about the screen time he allows his children.

A recent New York Times article described parents living in Silicon Valley and working in tech as saying they were often most concerned about excess screen time and tech addiction among children. "I'm like every other parent I guess," Pichai said. "I do test a lot of gadgets at home, so I have vulnerabilities in terms of how my kids get access to stuff."

Pichai then said his son had been mining ether, the cryptocurrency tied to the Ethereum blockchain. "Last week I was at dinner with my son, and I was talking about something about bitcoin, and my son clarified what I was talking about was Ethereum, which is slightly different," Pichai said. "He's 11 years old. And he told me he's mining it."

The Google CEO was asked whether he had a server in his home to assist in his son's mining efforts, to which he said his family had only a simple computer, one that Pichai built himself. Pichai said he did have to explain to his crypto-minded son the nation's monetary system 'and how paper money actually works.' "I realized he understood Ethereum better than how paper money works," Pichai said. "I had to talk to him about the banking system, the importance of it. It was a good conversation."

Pichai's son isn't the only child of a Google executive who's mining cryptocurrency. At a blockchain conference hosted by Sir Richard Branson in Morocco in July, the Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin also said he and his son had been mining ether. "A year or two ago, my son insisted that we needed to get a gaming PC," Brin said. "I told him, 'OK! If we get a gaming PC, we have to mine cryptocurrency.' So we set up an Ethereum miner on there, and we've made a few pennies, a few dollars since."

Following the company’s recent dealings with the sexual misconduct allegations against its employees, thousands of people working with Google decided to walk out in protest. It was the same day when CEO Sundar Pichai addressed this interview. Speaking on the issue, Pichai admitted that the heat of anguish among the employees is felt by everyone at Google.